Wallace

Wallace, ALFRED RUSSEL, traveller and naturalist, was born at Usk in Monmouthshire, 8th January 1822, and was educated for the profession of land-surveyor and architect, a calling he exercised until 1845, when he devoted himself exclusively to studies and researches in natural history. He spent four years on the Amazon with Mr Bates, and eight amongst the Malay Islands, making extensive zoological collections. It was while living in the East that, unaware of Mr Darwin's cognate researches and speculations, Wallace formed and committed to writing a theory of development by natural selection, though not using the term. Valuable contributions to zoology, botany, and cognate subjects are to be found in his Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro (1853); Palm Trees of the Amazon (1853); The Malay Archipelago (1869; 10th ed. 1892); Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (1870). In a work On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism (1875) he vindicates views seldom entertained by men of science; the article SPIRITUALISM in the present work is from his pen. The Geographical Distribution of Animals (1876) practically founded a new science; for 'Wallace's Line,' see the article GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. Tropical Nature appeared in 1878, Australasia in 1879 (new ed.; 2 vols. 1893-94), Island Life in 1880, Land Nationalisation in 1882, and Darwinism in 1889. He opposed compulsory vaccination in Forty-five Years of Registration Statistics (1885). He is F.R.S., LL.D., and D.C.L., and since 1881 has had a pension.